His own man …

… “That Little Sob in the Spine”: Vladimir Nabokov in Conversation - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The best-written profile in Conversations dates from 1959 and was published in an unlikely venue, Sports Illustrated. “An Absence of Wood Nymphs” (available at the Sports Illustrated website) was written by Robert H. Boyle, and it stands on its own as a perfect little gem of an essay. Boyle, who died in May of this year at age 88, accompanied Nabokov and his wife on a butterfly collecting trip to Arizona. He prepared himself by reading his subject’s books and researching the butterflies of the Southwest, and then wove what he learned into a Nabokovian narrative for the readers of an American sports magazine. Boyle builds a nicely ironical sense of suspense into his story: will Nabokov capture Nabokov’s wood nymph, the species he discovered in the Grand Canyon in 1941 and to which he gave his name?

Imagine. A journalist going to all that trouble beforehand.